This is a list of (largely) contemporary thinkers, books and video content aimed as a reference for questions like -
"What should I read next?", "Who should I follow?" or "What are the best resources for [certain political topic]?"
The core list comes from Chomsky, and the books and people he's cited or praised. But the list has significantly expanded since then. Feel free to comment about any good books or channels you think should be on this list.
Chomsky discord server: https://discord.gg/2kse6pQ (for resource sharing and discussion)
r/BreadTube(for video focussed content) discord here: https://discord.gg/bbbJnXg
Journalists
Start off with:
★ Adam H Johnson - Propaganda Model, Media Critique at FAIR
★ Nathan J Robinson - Journalist, Current Affairs
★ Glenn Greenwald- Journalist, Privacy, US imperialism. The Intercept
Also Great
Owen Jones- UK Journalist
Naomi Klein- Journalist, neoliberalism, globalization.
★ George Monbiot- Journalist, environmentalist.
Amy Goodman- Journalist Democracy Now
Alex Press - Journalist and Founder, Jacobin
Alexander Cockburn - Journalist
Chris Hedges- Journalist.
P Sainath- Journalist, India specialist
Whistleblowing:
Daniel Ellsberg- Vietnam, Released Pentagon Papers.
US History and Foreign Policy
Start off with:
★ Noam Chomsky - Everything
Howard Zinn- Historian
Laura Poitras - Documentary maker
Also Great
Eqbal Ahmad, - US imperialism
Michelle Alexander, US prison system
William Blum- Former State Dept. Agent, Historian, US imperialism
Jean Bricmont- “The Belgian Chomsky” – US imperialism, geopolitics,
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz - US History
Thomas Ferguson- US elections specialist.
Ian Haney Lopez- Racism, US politics.
Deepa Kumar- US imperialism, Islamophobia.
Andrew Bacevich - U.S. foreign policy, historian
Economics
Start off with:
Thomas Piketty - inequality
★Ha-Joon Chang - institutional economist, specialising in development economics:
Joseph Stiglitz - Former World Bank Chief Economist
Amartya Sen- Third world development and Inequality, Nobel Prize Winner
Richard Wolff- Marxism
Also Great
Richard Wilkinson- inequality
William Krehm - Labour
★ Stephanie Kelton - Modern Monetary Theory
Historians
Start off with:
★Thomas Frank - historian, American politics
Howard Zinn- "People's" Historian
★Raul Hilberg - The Leading Authority on the Holocaust
Phillip Mirowski - History of economics
Eric Hobsbawm - historian, Marxist
Also Great
Gar Aleprovitz, - world war 2, co-operatives.
Alex Carey - Laid the foundation for Manufacturing Consent
Nancy Maclean - US South, Labor, Race
Mike Davis- Globalization, Historian.
Gerald Horne- Historian, black liberation.
Gabriel Kolko- Historian. World War 2.
Morris Berman - historian, American social critic
Israel/Palestine
Start off with:
Norman Finkelstein- Israel specialist.
Avi Shlaim - Israel
Also Great
Amira Hass- Journalist, Israel specialist.
Illan Pappe- Israel specialist
James Petras- Israel and Latin America specialist.
Greg Philo- Media criticism, Israel.
Media Criticism
Start off with:
Edward Herman- Media criticism.
Robert McChesney- media criticism.
Edward Said- sociology, Islamophobia, Israel, media criticism
Also Great
Ben Bagdikian, - media criticism.
Keane Bhatt- Media Criticism, Latin America.
Oliver Boyd-Barrett- Media Criticism
Sut Jhally- sociology, film-maker
James Curran- Media Criticism
Alan MacLeod - Media Criticism, Venezuela
Anarchism/Socialism/Political Theory
Start off with:
David Graeber- historian, anarchism, Occupy Wall Street, anthropology.
Joel Bakan, - writer of “The Corporation”, seminal book on corporations.
★ Cornel West- sociology
Tariq Ali, “The British Chomsky”- everything from globalization to history to politics.
Murray Bookchin - Anarchism
Also Great
Angela Davis- Feminism, Marxism, black liberation.
Peter Gelderloos - anarchism
Uri Gordon - anarchism, Israel/Palestine
Harry Cleaver - Marxism, economics
Michel Bauwens - P2P, political economy
James C. Scott - anarchism, anthropology
Michael Heinrich - Marxism, political science
Specialists
Stephen Cohen- Russia specialist.
Bruce Cummings- Korea Specialist.
Aviva Chomsky – Immigration, Latin America.
Eduardo Galeano- Poet, Author, Latin American specialist.
Fawaz Gerges - Middle East specialist.
Andrej Grubacic- Yugoslavia specialist.
Flynt and Hillary Leverett- Iran specialists.
William I. Robinson- globalization, neoliberalism, Latin America specialist
Lars Schoultz- Latin America specialist
Sanho Tree- drugs, Colombia specialist
★ Nick Turse - Africa
Mark Weisbrot- economics, Latin America
Kevin Young- media criticism, Latin America
Raj Patel- Food
Vijay Prashad- globalization, third world development
Thomas Szasz- Criticism of psychiatry
Alfie Kohn- Education.
Daniel Kovalik - Human rights
Paulo Freire- Education.
Henry Giroux- Education
Greg Grandin - Historian, Latin America
Dave Zirin- sports
Gabor Maté- Education, drugs, psychiatry.
Kate Bronfenbrenner - Labour and Unions
Loic Wacquant - sociology, neoliberalism
Bernard Harcourt - surveillance, penal law
Eric Toussaint - political science, debt
The best arguments for major mainstream political positions:
Fascism and Neo-Conservatism
On Dictatorship and The Concept of The Political Carl Schmitt
Note:
Some have argued that neoconservativism has been influenced by Schmitt Most notably the legal opinions offered by Alberto Gonzales, John Yoo et al. by invoking the unitary executive theory to justify highly controversial policies in the war on terror—such as introducing unlawful combatant status which purportedly would eliminate protection by the Geneva Conventions torture, NSA electronic surveillance program—mimic his writings.Professor David Luban said in 2011 that "[a] Lexis search reveals five law review references to Schmitt between 1980 and 1990; 114 between 1990 and 2000; and 420 since 2000, with almost twice as many in the last five years as the previous five"
Realpolitik
World Order, by Henry Kissinger
Liberalism/Social Democracy
A Theory of Justice, by John Rawls
Right-Wing Libertarianism
Anarchy, State, Utopia by Robert Nozick
Technocracy
Zero to One, by Peter Thiel
Marxism-Leninism
Left-Wing Communism, and Infantile Disorder by Vladimir Lenin
Recommended books:
Israel/Palestine and the Middle East:
Start off with:
The Iron Wall by Avi Shlaim
★ Gaza: An Inquest Into Its Martyrdom by Norman Finkelstein
Also Great
★ Fateful Triangle by Noam Chomsky
Israel/Palestine: How to End the War of 1948 by Tanya Reinhart
The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities by Simha Flapan
Between the Lines: Israel, the Palestinians, and the U.S. War on Terror by Tikva Honig-Parnass
The Holocaust Industry: Norman Finkelstein
Defending the Holy Land: A Critical Analysis of Israel's Security and Foreign Policy by Zeev Maoz
Gaza: An Inquest Into Its Martyrdom by Norman Finkelstein
The New Intifada: Resisting Israel’s Apartheid by Roane Carey, Alison Weir, and others
The Battle for Justice in Palestine by Ali Abunimah
American Foreign Policy:
Start off with:
★ ★ ★ Understanding Power by Noam Chomsky
Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II by William Blum
Also Great:
Defeat: Why America and Britain Lost Iraq by Jonathon Steele
A Different Kind of War: The Un Sanctions Regime in Iraq by Hans. C. Von Sponeck
Al-Qaeda: Casting a Shadow of Terror by Jason Burke
How America Gets Away with Murder: Illegal Wars, Collateral Damage and Crimes Against Humanity by Michael Mandel
The Deaths of Others: The Fate of Civilians in America's Wars by John Turnam
Talking to the Enemy: Faith, Brotherhood, and the (Un)Making of Terrorists by Scott Atran
The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade by Alfred W. McCoy
Ideal Illusions: How the U.S. Government Co-opted Human Rights by James Peck
War Stars: The Superweapon and the American Imagination by Howard Bruce Franklin
Next Time They’ll Come to Count the Dead: War and Survival in South Sudan by Nick Turse
Tomorrow's Battlefield : U.S. Proxy Wars and Secret Ops in Africa by Nick Turse
The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II by John Dower
Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety by Eric Schlosser
The Hungry World: America's Cold War Battle Against Poverty in Asia by Nick Cullather
Voices From the Other Side: An Oral History of Terrorism Against Cuba by Keith Bolender
The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner by Daniel Ellsberg
Tinderbox: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Roots of Terrorism by Stephen Zunes
One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War by Michael Dobbs
Kill Chain: Drones and The Rise of the High-Tech Assassins by Andrew Cockburn
First Do No Harm: Humanitarian Intervention and the Destruction of Yugoslavia by David Gibbs
The Management of Savagery by Max Blumenthal
Media and Propaganda:
Start off with:
Manufacturing Consent by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky
Propaganda by Edward Bernays
The Record of the Paper: How the New York Times Misreports US Foreign Policy by Richard A. Falk
Also Great:
The Real Terror Network: Terrorism in Fact and Propaganda by Edward Herman
The Politics of Genocide by Edward Herman
Taking the Risk Out of Democracy: Corporate Propaganda versus Freedom and Liberty by Alex Carey
American History and Culture:
Start off with:
★ A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn
Also Great:
Political Repression in Modern America: FROM 1870 TO 1976 by Robert Justin Goldstein
No is Not Enough: Resisting Trump's Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need by Naomi Klein
The Industrial Worker, 1840-1860: The Reaction of American Industrial Society to the Advance of the Industrial Revolution by Norman Ware
Voices of a People's History of the United States by Anthony Arnove and Howard Zinn
Violent Politics: A History of Insurgency, Terrorism, and Guerrilla War, from the American Revolution to Iraq by William R. Polk
★ With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful by Glenn Greenwald
Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right by Arlie Russell Hochschild
The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism by Edward Baptist
The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II by Douglas A. Blackmon
Inferno: The World at War, 1939-1945 by Max Hastings
The Politics of War: Allied Diplomacy and the World Crisis of 1943-1945 by Gabriel Kolko Labor History:
The Fall of the House of Labor by David Montgomery
Selling Free Enterprise: The Business Assault on Labor and Liberalism, 1945-60 by Elizabeth A. Fones-Wolf
The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815-1846 by Charles Grier Sellers
Sociopathic Society: A People’s Sociology of the United States by Charles Derber
On the Rojava Experiment:
Revolution in Rojava
Struggles for Autonomy in Kurdistan
A Small Key Can Open a Large Door
Rojava: An Alternative to Imperialism, Nationalism, and Islamism in the Middle East
Coming Down the Mountains
To Dare Imagining: Rojava Revolution
★ Ocalan’s Prison Writings
Anarchism, Socialism, Philosophy, and Science:
Start off with:
★ Government In The Future(Talk) by Noam Chomsky
Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell
On Anarchism by Mikhail Bakunin
The Limits of State Action by Wilhelm von Humboldt
Also Great
Progress Without People: In Defense of Luddism by David F. Noble
Granny Made Me an Anarchist: General Franco, The Angry Brigade and Me by Stuart Christie
Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science by Alan Sokal
Beyond the Hoax: Science, Philosophy and Culture by Alan Sokal
A Theory of Power by Jeff Vail
Workers' Councils by Anton Pannekoek
The State: Its Origin and Function by William Paul
On Anarchism by Noam Chomsky
The Anarchist Collectives: Workers' Self-Management in the Spanish Revolution 1936-39 by Sam Dolgoff
Anarchism by Daniel Guerin
The Ancestors Tale by Richard Dawkins
Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan
Memory and the Computational Brain: Why Cognitive Science WIll Transform Neuroscience by Randy Gallistel and Adam Philip King
Vision: A Computational Investigation Into the Human Representation and Processing of Visual Information by David Marr
Economics:
Start off with:
★ ★ Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism by Ha-Joon Chang
★ Making Globalization Work by Joseph Stiglitz
Capital in the 21st Century by Thomas Piketty
Adam Smith and His Legacy for Modern Capitalism by Patricia H. Werhane
Also Great:
Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism by Richard Wolff
Das Kapital by Karl Marx
Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith
Affluence and Influence: Economic Inequality and Political Power in America by Martin Gilens
America Beyond Capitalism by Gar Alperovitz
The ABCs of Political Economy: A Modern Approach by Robert Hahnel
★ ★ Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the Logic of Money-Driven Political Systems by Thomas Ferguson
The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer by Dean Baker
Rigged: How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy Were Structured to Make the Rich Richer by Dean Baker
Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age by Larry M. Bartels
Understanding Capitalism: Critical Analysis From Karl Marx to Amartya Sen by Douglas Down
Whose Crisis, Whose Future?: Towards a Greener, Fairer, Richer World by Susan George
Business as Usual: The Economic Crisis and the Failure of Capitalism by Paul Mattock Jr.
Greening the Global Economy by Robert Pollin
Capitalism: A Ghost Story by Arundhati Roy
Political Economy and Laissez Faire by Rajani Kannepalli Kanth
The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time by Karl Polanyi
Miscellaneous:
★ Discipline and Punish, by Michel Foucault
Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs by Johann Hari
Controlling the Dangerous Classes by Randall G. Shelden
Pedagogy of the Opressed by Paulo Freire
The Verso Book of Dissent: From Spartacus to the Shoe-Thrower of Baghdad by Andrew Hsiao
Don't Mourn, Balkanize!: Essays After Yugoslavia by Andrej Grubačić
★ Field Notes on Democracy: Listening to Grasshoppers by Arundhati Roy
Voices from the Plain of Jars: Life under an Air War by Fred Branfman
We by Yevgeny Zamyatin
In Praise of Barbarians by Mike Davis
Damming the Flood by Peter Hallward
Hope and Folly: The United States and UNESCO, 1945-1985 by Edward Herman and Herbert Schiller
Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village by William Hinton
The Egyptians: A Radical Story by Jack Shenker
Welcome to the Revolution: Universalizing Resistance for Social Justice and Democracy in Perilous Times by Charles Derber
Sociopathic Society: A People’s Sociology of the United States by Charles Derber
The Black Jacobins by C.L.R. James
Dark Money by Jane Meyers
King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild
Recommended YouTubers/Creators/Channels(with a linked video to get you started):
Political
Contrapoints | America: Still Racist
★ Philosophy Tube | The Philosophy of Antifa
★ ★ Chomsky’s Philosophy | Bakunin's Predictions
HBomber Guy | Soy Boys: A Measured Response
Shaun | How Privatisation Fails: Railways
Badmouse Productions | Argument ad Venezuelum
Three Arrows | Who is actually at fault for the refugee crisis?
Gravesend Films (with Norman Finkelstein) | The Idea Of Utopia
The Intercept | Greenwald and Risen debate Russiagate
Non Political
Lindsay Ellis - Film Criticism | The Ideology of the First Order
The Great War - History | The Run For The Baku Oil Fields
History Civilis - History | The Constitution Of The Spartans
Numberphile - Mathematics | Perplexing Paperclips
Computerphile - Technology | The Bitcoin Power Problem
Vihart - Mathematics | Hexaflexagons
3Blue1Brown - Mathematics | How Cryptocurrencies Work
PBS SpaceTime - Astronomy, Physics | The Blackhole Information Paradox
Will Schoder - Video Essays | The Problem with Irony and Postmodernism
Assorted Documentaries to get you started:
★ Manufacturing Consent - The seminal work on how the population is controlled in democratic societies
★ ★ Citizenfour - Edward Snowden, Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras in a Hong Kong Room.
★ ★ Risk - A deep look at Wikileaks - from the inside the embassy.
The Murder of Fred Hampton - How the FBI brazenly assassinated an American citizen without any warrant or due process
Weiner - An incredible look at how political campaigns function from the inside.
The Corporation - What are corporations?
The Shock Doctrine - Lectures by Naomi Klein, news-reel footage and analysis to explain the connection between politics and economics.
★ Hypernormalization - Explains not only why chaotic events happen - but also why we, and politicians, cannot understand them.
Inside Job - A look at the cause for the financial crisis
Podcasts
Start off with:
★ ★ ★ Citations Needed
Also Great:
Protect Yourself:
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